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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - MMS & Advanced Issues ⬆ Archive through July 07, 2009 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| sean New member Username: Sean Post Number: 3 Registered: 01-2008 |
Hi, I am using the NOW SMS/MMS tool to send an MMS to multiple recipients via an MM7 interface to an operator MMSC. I just have a couple of queries on this: 1. We are encountering a problem where the details of all the recipients are present in the message details (on the MMS) at the recpient handset. Is there a way around this? What I was thinking was maybe inserting the destination MSISDN's as a Bcc. and not in the To filed? Is there a way to do this (using the NOW SMS/MMS Web GUI)? Or is there a way for the NOW MSM/MMS tool to send 1 MMS per recipient? These are just 2 ideas, any more would be welcome. 2. Is there a way to throttle messages, i.e. can I throttle the rate messages are sent over the MM7 interface to 5 msg/sec, for example? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks. | |||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 112 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Sean, 1. Yes, you should use BCC if you don't want the rrecipients to be listed. However, you are correct, we don't support BCC through the web interface. You would need to be submitting to NowSMS via MM7 to specify BCC. I don't know why we don't support BCC via the web interface, as it is a pretty simple matter. If you were submitting to an operator MMSC via a modem over MM1, you could edit VASP\outboundaccountname\VASP.INI and set MaxRecips=1 (the default is 5), and that would take care of the issue. But if you're submitting to an operator MMSC via MM7, MaxRecips defaults to 100 ... and even if you set it lower, it still maintains To/Cc information for all message instances. What you could do is edit VASP\outboundaccountname\VASP.INI and set ForceBCC=Yes. That would force all recipient information to be submitted to the MMSC as BCC. 2. At present, no. We do have those types of controls available for outbound SMSC connections, but we do not yet for outbound MMSC connections. That is one of the features on our "short list" for a future update. -- Des NowSMS Support | |||
| sean |
Hi Des, Thanks for the response. I tested adding the field "ForceBCC=Yes" in the ini file and initial tests seem to indicate that it works well. Thanks again for that. With regards to the last point you made, I have a question on that a few more on the general spec of NowSMS: 1 How do you throttle outbound SMSC connections? 2. What is the max list of numbers I can submit over my SMPP connection? i.e. if I wanted to submit an SMS to a bulk list of numbers, what is the maximum amount of numbers I can send at one time? 3. Assuming this max number, I presume the throttling value will keep the message rate at that value? 4. Do you have a limit on the number of recipients for outgoing MMS's? 5. Are there any timelines outlined yet for the rollout of MMS throttling? 6. Is there a way to stop a bulk job midway through sending? And if so, is it possible to see the numbers that NowSMS delivered to and what numbers didnt? Sorry for all the questions here, just trying to get a handle on the capabilities. Thanks. | |||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 122 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Sean, 1.) It's an SMSGW.INI file setting. There's a good explanation of it here: http://blog.nowsms.com/2008/06/smsc-speed-limits.html 2.) NowSMS doesn't impose a limit. But as far as SMPP connections go, messages are submitted one at a time, so there are going to be throughput limits on the actual submission. (The SMPP spec does define a "submit_multi" operation, but the reality is that it is rarely implemented anywhere, and it wasn't designed for the type large bulk submissions that we see nowdays anyway.) When submitting via HTTP, the list of numbers can be submitted as a comma delimited list of numbers. But if you are using HTTP GET, while NowSMS does not have a limit, most scripting libraries have URL length limits. Most scripting languages have a limit of at least 2000 characters/bytes for a URL length, but it was recently pointed out to me that ASP.NET imposes a limit of MAX_PATH, or 260 characters, which is very small. To get around URL length limitations, it is also possible to use HTTP POST instead of HTTP GET. When you use HTTP POST, all of the HTTP GET variables are instead sent in the POST data, using "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" format (standard web form POST format). Just put all of the variables (everything after the "?") in the post data instead of the URL, and remove the "?" off of the URL. This way you get around any length limitations that your scripting language might impose on HTTP GET URL length. Alternatively you can use NowSMS distribution lists, which you can find more information about in the following post: http://blog.nowsms.com/2007/06/editing-distribution-lists-and-address.html 3.) Yes. 4.) Currently there is a limit of 200,000. 5.) This is expected in the release for next spring. (It may show up earlier in interim releases that we post on the discussion board, but that exact timing is not known.) 6.) Only stopping the NowSMS service, not individual jobs (and deleting the remaining queued messages). A list of what has been transmitted can be found in the SMSOUT-yyyymmdd.LOG file. -- Des NowSMS Support | |||
| sean |
Hi Des, Further to your point about there being a limit of 200,000 MMS's in the queue, is there a maximum number of numbers I can upload from the address book when I am sending an MMS from the web GUI? Does the NowSMS MMSC throttle these messages to the message rate (on license)? Will it reject messages after it has surpassed the message rate set by the license? Thanks, Sean. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 7678 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Sean, I'm going to jump in here briefly for Des. Before I answer your question, reading back through this thread I noticed that you asked earlier about throttling outbound MM7 message delivery. That is a feature that has just recently been added. It is currently available in an interim release. If you are interested, this can be downloaded from http://www.nowsms.com/download/nowsmsupdate.zip. Regarding the 200,000 recipient limit for an MMS message ... That is a limit for a single message instance, meaning the number of recipients for a single MMS message ... not an overall queue limit. You can send a message to more recipients, it just needs to be submitted in multiple submissions. I believe the actual current limit in NowSMS 2008 has been raised, but I don't know the actual limit. (If you do need to send to more than 200,000, multiple submissions would be a good idea anyway.) When you send via the web interface, if you send to a distribution list, at some point the distribution list will be truncated at this limit. Des says 200,000 ... I think it might be higher, but I don't know the number. (Important note for others reading this thread. This recipient limit applies to MMS only. I know of customers using NowSMS distribution lists for SMS that have more than 1,000,000 recipients.) Regarding what happens... If a single MMS message is sent to a list larger than this limit (let's say 200,000), then the recipient may be truncated at this limit. This does not mean that additional MMS messages cannot be queued. Outbound message delivery is throttled based upon license. Messages aren't rejected, just throttled, based upon a throughput of messages per second. In the case of MMS, it gets a little confusing. What is a message? If you send a message to 200,000 recipients, is that considered one message? No. Is it considered 200,000 messages? Not necessarily. (In SMS it would be.) Des mentioned the "MaxRecips" setting for external MMSC connections which specifies the maximum number of recipients per message instance supported by the MMSC. NowSMS breaks the message into groups of "MaxRecips" recipients. Let's take the example of a message to 200,000 recipients, and let's say the MMSC limits messages to 10 recipients per message. That one message becomes 20,000 message submissions (200,000 / 10) to the MMSC ... and that is the unit upon which throttling occurs. I'm not sure if that makes things clearer or more confusing...hopefully it adds some clarity. -bn | |||
| sean New member Username: Sean Post Number: 2 Registered: 01-2008 |
Hi Bryce, Thanks a lot for the clarification. It definitely made things clear. Regards, Sean. | |||
